It's well known that noise can interfere with sleep - that's why alarm clocks work! However, it's also possible to become accustomed to high levels of noise and so sleep through them, such as when you sleep on a plane or train.
It's also not just the volume of a noise that affects sleep - parents may well be woken by the stirring of a child, yet sleep through a thunderstorm. Sleep disturbance can also be caused by many factors other than noise, like stress, changes in light and other physiological reasons.
Despite extensive studies into the effects of noise on sleep, it is difficult to derive definitive noise exposure criteria governing sleep disturbance. What is clear, however, is that sleep disturbance is a significant cause of annoyance; so whether directly caused by noise or not, if people perceive a noise to be the reason for disturbed sleep they are more likely to be annoyed by it.